Archives West Finding Aid

Byron Hirst was a prominent citizen, businessman, and lawyer in Cheyenne from 1943 until his retirement in 1987. He belonged to numerous civic, political, and religious organizations, and he played an active role in most of them. He was usually president, director, or at least a member of the board. He was an ardent champion of conservative Republican and Evangelical Christian causes, but he also found time to promote a wide range of non-partisan activities such as country clubs, gun clubs, fraternal organizations, and many others. He served in the Wyoming Senate and as a Cheyenne prosecutor, but those posts were only a small part of his long civic career as an advocate and organizer including the Cheyenne Committee of the Newcomen Society and The Young Men’s Literary Club.

Edward Byron Hirst was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1912. He came to Cheyenne, Wyoming at the age of 15, after living in Missouri and Illinois. He was an outstanding athlete. He graduated at the head of his Cheyenne High School class in 1929 and then entered the University of Nebraska where he lettered in football and basketball.

He graduated with an A.B. in 1933. From 1933 until 1937, he was an aid to future Senator Joseph C. O’Mahoney and served in various capacities coordinating patronage and acting as a private secretary. He also attended George Washington Law School from 1933 to 1936 earning a J.D. and an L.L.B. From 1933 to 1938 he was a 2nd lieutenant in the U. S. Army Reserve. Hirst was admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1936, and he received an L.L.M. from Harvard Law School in 1937.

That same year Hirst returned to Cheyenne, and then established a law office in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. In 1940 he switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party and organized a Wilkie for President Club. During World War II, he was the Air Raid Warden for Laramie County.

From 1943 to 1947 Hirst was the Prosecuting Attorney for Laramie County. In the course of closing gambling, prostitution, and loan sharking operations, he successfully prosecuted Cheyenne’s Mayor, Chief of Police, and Chief of Detectives for graft. He also corrected problems with the Cheyenne hospital by reorganizing its Board of Trustees. He gained national recognition in the press as “The Tom Dewey of the West” for these achievements.

Hirst was associated with Allen A. Pearson from 1945 until 1956. He founded the Cheyenne Community Council. He was a member of the Blue Shield Board of Trustees. He became active in many legal associations including the Wyoming State Bar Association. He was in the Tenth Circuit Judicial Conference, and he was President of the Laramie County Bar Association.

From 1953 to 1958, Hirst was a Wyoming State Senator, and he served as Executive Secretary of the Wyoming Compilation Commission which edited and published the first annotated Wyoming statutes. He was also a member of the Wyoming Digest Committee and published the first digest of legal decisions.

At the same time Hirst organized the First Board of Directors of the Bank of Laramie. He was associated with George W. Hopper, and then in 1958 he became associated with James L. Applegate. He was Chairman of the Board of DePaul Hospital. In 1959 he joined the Federation of Insurance Counsel, and he served as chairman of the Wyoming Advisory Committee on Naval Affairs. He was the Chairman of the Board of the Capital Savings and Loan Association. Hirst was President of the Cheyenne Country Club and the Wyoming Chairman of the American College of Probate Counsel. In 1962 he associated with Richard V. Thomas. He organized the First Cheyenne State Bank and then the Wyoming Bancorporation. In 1971 he became President of Hirst and Applegate. In 1976 he became the Wyoming State Chairman of the American College of Trial Lawyers. In 1987 Hirst resigned as President and Director of Hirst & Applegate.

Hirst married Mary Anne Sheppard in 1936. She was born in Grandin, Missouri in 1906. She graduated from the Tudor Hall School for girls in 1924; she graduated with an A.B. from Vassar in 1928; and she was awarded an M.A. from Columbia University in 1933. She died in 1944. The couple had three children: Helen Anne Hirst (1936), Carol Susan Hirst (1939), and Clinton S. Hirst (1944). Hirst married his second wife Virginia Mosher Hirst in 1947, and she died in 1985. Hirst married his third wife, artist Frances Middleton de Berard, in 1986.